During a conference call, voice or media connections are typically made between two or more communication devices such as telephones or mobile phones.
When scheduling a conventional conference call, a user typically is required to configure the conference call manually. For example, all conference call information would be entered into specific fields or tags, including the time, attendees, host, and conference access number. Specific menus and interfaces would be used to implement these functions. When a quick meeting needs to be convened, there is time overhead required to set up the meeting. In addition, the user can be distracted from the substantive content of the meeting in order to facilitate the administrative aspect in coordinating the meeting.
When receiving a conference call invitation in a device, typically the specific fields or tags are used to determine the particular conference call details. This can raise compatibility issues. For example, in some conventional systems, both the host and the participant can be forced to use the same or compatible scheduling software applications, in order to exchange suitable scheduling information. However, in many instances the participants can be using a variety of different applications for scheduling, such as Google™ Calendar, Apple™ iCal, GoDaddy™ Online Group Calendar, IBM Lotus Notes™, Yahoo™ Calendar, and Microsoft Outlook™. These programs typically use a calendar standard format for merely communicating and setting up calendar appointments, and are not specific to setting up conference calls.
There are yet further some variety of different vendors who have dedicated templates for scheduling conference calls, for example InterCall, WebEx, ACT, Live Meeting, and e-Dial. However, any additional specialized features in these templates typically require both the host and the participant to have a dedicated or compatible software application to recognize the particular template in order to use any specialized tags or fields. This can result in a relatively inflexible result when attempting to schedule a conference call between multiple parties.
Other difficulties with existing teleconferencing systems will be apparent to those skilled in the art in view of the detailed description below.
Similar reference numerals can be used in different figures to denote similar components.